"These small islands, once regarded as remote by those who understandably saw themselves as central, have nevertheless played a role in the world's affairs far beyond their size." So Jonathan Clark writes in his powerful opening to this confident and fascinating history of Britain. It is sold by its publishers as a "definitive" new take on our islands' story, and the six authors certainly make the case for the importance of their subject. "On technical debates within academic history depend real outcomes in the world of action," Clark adds. And the outcome that this volume seeks to shape is the modern meaning of Britishness.

A World by Itself: A History of the British Isles

by
Jonathan Clark

There is a pre-history to works like this. In their modern mode they begin with Lord Macaulay's four-volume History of England, which sat on every mid-Victorian bedside table. The single-volume history emerged later in the 19th century, and was perfected by GM Trevelyan in his 1926 History of England, which shifted 200,000 copies in 20 years. Then came the multi-volume, multi-authored histories of which The Oxford History of England was perhaps the most celebrated – not least thanks to AJP Taylor's seminal contribution.

What all these works had in common was a conviction that the history of Britain meant the history of England, and that it was a glorious, Whiggish tale of parliamentary governance, the common law, the Church of England, and an avoidance of revolution. In Clark's volume the authors concentrate on the four kingdoms, with the politico-religious interactions between Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England (as well as the American colonies) driving the narrative. As such it fits well with the current vogue for Atlanticist studies and the re-positioning of Britain in its archipelago setting.

In turn, the four kingdoms focus undercuts any vestige of Whiggish ­triumphalism. Here Clark seems to have his sights on Simon Schama's History of Britain. Having condemned historians for "popular entertainment or moral uplift", he is even harder on "historical writing that conceals its working and so presents a bland, uncontestable story implicitly claiming an authority that it does not have". This volume, by contrast, is about questions not answers and, in line with such post-modern hesitancy, each chapter ends with counter-factuals pointing out where history might have pursued different paths.

We begin in 500BC and end in 2009, with the six authors providing a predominantly structuralist account of ­Britain's pasts. While issues of class, ­demography, politics, and gender are addressed ­comprehensively, the reader will look in vain for literature, science, or the history of ideas. Historical biography is clearly regarded as vulgar.

The first theme to emerge is the wealth of Britain. "Wonderfully rich in grain, it should be called the granary of Ceres; fabulously rich in gold, a veritable treasury of Arabia," was how William the Conqueror's chaplain surveyed England in 1066. The Romans were equally enamoured of Britain's resources, with grain regularly transported from Britain to the armies of the Rhine. And this wealth shaped the physical fabric, as James Campbell describes the lost world of the Roman villas that once littered lowland Britain. He also makes a case for the economic benefits of Viking invasions: the sacking of medieval monasteries put into circulation much needed bullion, and the Norsemen used this to go on to found early urban Ireland.

For the most part, however, prosperity was built on political stability. Compared to Europe, civil strife was limited and what the Domesday Book revealed was just how well governed early medieval England was. Seven hundred years on, the authors make a similar case for the Industrial Revolution: forget technology, the things that kick-started industrialisation were a steady state, the absence of invasion and the rule of law.

The enemy of political stability was religious instability. And religion is fundamental to this volume, perhaps reflecting the intellectual inclinations of its high Tory editor, Jonathan Clark, but also our post-secular times. There is a masterful account of the Reformation by Jenny Wormald, followed by a ­succinct analysis of the English Civil War (or War of the Four Kingdoms), which is seen as the result of a messy religious divergence under a system of multiple monarchies – all unfortunately headed by King Charles I, described as "one of the great tidiers up of history". The ­secular Enlightenment is dismissed as a non-event and a convincing case is made for the American Revolution as a final "war of religion" by radical Dissenters.

But at the volume's core is an exploration of British identity. Wormald chronicles the hostility on both sides of the Anglo-Scottish border to King James VI and I's attempts at union, with the English assuming superiority, the Scots fearing becoming a province, and James attempting to sustain a personal monarchy. Meanwhile Clark, in his chapter, is keen to confront the notion that British identity was forged during the 18th century under the influences of Protestantism, war and Empire. This, he argues, was a 19th-century assumption. "Rather, 'identity' should be understood as a descriptive term, devised and deployed for practical political purposes, not the reflection of any 'underlying' reality." According to Clark, what triumphed was Englishness, with the label British only used as a euphemism for the Irish, Scots and English when abroad.

More provocatively still, Clark makes the case that England's status as a monarchical and imperial nation under the Church of England made it more of an open and pluralist society than many Continental nations, fed on blood and soil identities. During the 19th century, even as Welsh, Irish and Scottish romanticism flourished, there was no clear sense of English nationhood. But there did exist an organic, indigenous, non-elite sense of deep British patriotism.

That died in the 20th century, according to Robert Skidelsky, whose final chapter is as polemical as Clark's. Skidelsky is characteristically deft on the inter-war economy, lucidly charting the catastrophe of Treasury thinking on the gold standard, the collapse of Britain's staple exports and its failure to grow new markets. At the same time, he rightly baulks at the notion of a 30s Britain composed solely of dole queues, means tests and hunger marches. However, for my taste he seems overly enamoured of the Correlli Barnett thesis of post-war decline, and treats us to an irascible assault on 20th-century Establishment thinking as a betrayal of British identity.

There is, on the whole, a certain Grumpy Old Men and Women undertone to this volume. Despite explaining the latest historiography, there is a distinct aversion towards pursuing some of the new academic thinking on questions of space, gender or empire. What we do have, though, is a well-crafted, footnote-free and thorough history of the British Isles containing some brilliant set-pieces and narrative overviews. It is a volume that speaks well to our own sense of Britain today as a globalised, trading island retreating back to the edges of power. While not a definitive history, it is a damned good one.

Tristram Hunt's most recent book is The Frock-Coated Communist (Allen Lane)

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